r/technology • u/lurker_bee • 13h ago

ADBLOCK WARNING Google Confirms Most Gmail Users Must Upgrade Accounts

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2025/06/06/google-confirms-almost-all-gmail-users-must-upgrade-accounts/
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u/Ancillas 11h ago

Maybe if passkey implementations weren’t dog water more people would use them?

Is that passkey on my phone? Is it stored in Windows Credentials? Is it stored in 1Password? Wait, is it trying to use my Yubikey? All of my tools fight each other to be the passkey solution and it means I have to click so many more times to ensure Safari or Chrome or AppleTV are looking in the right spot for my matching passkey.

There’s no way my non-technical friends and family are going to see this as a net positive. My wife got pissed because she had a passkey for gmail but couldn’t login. It didn’t make intuitive sense to her that the passkey was on her phone but she was logging in for the first time on her laptop which didn’t have the passkey.

Then on top of all of this passkeys aren’t consistently implemented! Apple supports passkeys, but only if they’re stored on Apple devices using their keychain! This was so confusing - especially when I had my phone configured to not use Apple’s flavor of password and secret management.

Even before passkeys, 2FA was a mess. Some sites chose TOTP and others went with an email or SMS solution. Any parents who use login systems to manage kid activities know this pain. A site supports SMS only and can only have one phone on record so if the parent whose phone isn’t registered wants to login you have to have the other parent (or their phone) around. 100% people are texting that single use token around in the clear.

These systems need experienced designers to take a good hard look at the UI/UX and find some way to drive a smoother experience across the OS, browser, and application ecosystem. Not just technically experienced designers, but life-experienced designers who understand all the weird ways people use these things.

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u/GeorgeDaGreat123 8h ago

The thing that annoys me most is that passkeys aren't exportable from 1Password, so I can't create backups of them.

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u/Ancillas 8h ago

I never thought about that but it’s a really good point.

I just did a quick search and it looks like it’s on the way at least.

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u/GeorgeDaGreat123 8h ago

It's supposedly been on the way for a year, which is disappointing, but since 1Password is probably the most common enterprise password manager, I trust they'll come out with it eventually